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Store locator tools: which retailers offer the best mobile UX?

Store locator tools are hugely important for multichannel retailers, with their importance increasing due to the consumer shift to mobile and our reliance on digital maps for directions.

This was a point hammered home to me over the weekend when I was hopelessly wandering the streets of Catford trying to find a Tesco Superstore.

Store locator tools seem a very basic part of modern web design, yet clearly not all sites manage to get it right.

The importance of giving people useful, local information is further underlined by data published by Google.

It shows that 40% of mobile searches have local intent, while three out of four mobile searches trigger follow-up actions, whether that be further research, a store visit, a phone call, a purchase or word-of-mouth sharing.

With this in mind I’ve taken a look to see which brands have great mobile store locator tools, but first here's a look at a few features that need to be included.

Store locator UX factors

A bit of a no-brainer. Retailers should allow people to search for their local store using an IP address or their phone’s GPS signal.

It speeds up the process and means mobile users don’t have to enter their postcode using the small, fiddly keypad.

Include store information

It’s likely that people will need to know the opening times for each store, but retailers should also include contact information, the types of services available (e.g. click and collect, parking, types of products sold) and any other relevant details.

Make the map interactive

People want to be able to expand the map and navigate around to get a better idea of where each store is located.

This probably means plugging into the Google Maps API.

Good examples

And now for some examples of brands getting it right.

John Lewis

John Lewis has a ‘Shops’ tab in the top nav, so it’s really easy for mobile users to begin looking for their nearest outlet.

If you use the GPS feature it automatically brings back the details of the nearest shop, including opening hours, a click-to-call button, and in-depth details of how to find it (e.g. nearest tube, parking information, congestion charge, etc).

There’s also a button that links to Google Maps and another that leads to a downloadable department guide, though it comes as a PDF.

Debenhams

Though Debenhams’ store locator isn’t perfect, it is better than most.

It gives the opening hours, address, store manager’s name, and the location of the click & collect desk. It also links users to Google Maps for directions.

On the downside the locator tool is hidden within a tiny link in the hamburger menu, there’s no phone number, and the maps aren’t very useful.

Nandos

The bizarrely popular chicken restaurant has a great ‘Find your nearest Nandos’ CTA within the hamburger menu.

I could have done with this article being published a few weeks ago. :) We've just completed a UX exercise on our Wren Kitchens store finder: http://www.wrenkitchens.com/stores

The results since it's launch have been very positive. We're experiencing a big increase in users visiting a store detail page via a mobile phone and we're also witnessing an overall increase in footfall to our stores nationwide.

We spent a lot of time testing the best way of making it super easy for users to navigate to our stores using their devices. One click on the postcode opens their default navigation app with the nearest store pre-selected.

This is great, and you're right, how some information is gathered and displayed seems like a no-brainer in many cases. One thing I never understood, however, is why so many retailers display their open hours days and times in such a weird format, especially given the mobile nature of these store info pages. Instead of displaying each weekday and its open hours, most of which are usually the same except for weekends...

Clean, concise, gets the message across and saves a whole lot of space on a mobile device :)

about 3 years ago

Lambert David, Designer at Web Zeal

Really great post. I'm a senior web designer myself and was trying to look for the best UI/UX design for a store locator and I really like what I'm seeing here. I've seen a few good store locator software that's close to these design too, here's one that I've been using for most projects http://superstorefinder.net/megalocator/

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